MAYNARD: Melissa Southwell runs in One Run for Boston

Melissa Southwell vividly remembers the Boston Marathon bombings. The 35-year-old Maynard resident was caught between the two explosions as she was watching the runners cross the finish line.

The event has made her conscious of how life can change in an instant.

Holly Camero / hcamero@wickedlocal.com

Melissa Southwell vividly remembers the Boston Marathon bombings. The 35-year-old Maynard resident was caught between the two explosions as she was watching the runners cross the finish line.

The event has made her conscious of how life can change in an instant.

“I’m more aware of how precious everything is,” she said. “I hope it will be something that changes my life forever.”

Even now Southwell cries when she talks about what happened that day, and admits she is still startled by loud noises. But she finds comfort in running.

Running is “my way of coping,” she said. “And that’s part of what’s still helping me.”

She recently took part in One Run for Boston – a 3,300-mile non-stop running relay to raise money for The One Fund Boston. The event, organized by three friends from England, began on June 7, in Venice Beach, Los Angeles. It reached Boston at 1 a.m., Monday, July 1. Hundreds of runners from across the USA participated, passing a specially designed baton between them.

Southwell led an 8.5-mile run from Darien, Conn. to Westport, Conn., on Saturday, June 29.

The experience, she said, was uplifting.

“I think doing the run was how I healed myself, but I didn’t know that’s what it was going to take until I did it,” she said.

She learned about One Run for Boston after reading an article in Boston Magazine.

“At first I thought it seemed crazy,” she said.

Then she realized she “wanted to be part of moving the baton forward. I wanted to do my part to make sure that happened.”

She signed up to do a route in Connecticut that at the time had no runners. At first, she wanted to run alone, but when she registered she clicked on “Join Me” because she “felt it was the right thing to do.”

“And I’m so glad I did it. That’s part of the reason it’s meant so much to me. The ripple effects of what happened in Boston are very, very wide, and it’s touched a lot of people,” she said. “Two other people in my group were there.”

One was a runner who was in front of the Hynes Convention Center when the explosions went off. The woman did not finish the Marathon.

The day of the One Run was very hot, Southwell said, and she was “pushing my limits” by running eight miles.

“And after five miles I was really tired. And that baton is really heavy. So we were passing it around. One of the runners is a half-marathoner – and she carried the baton for two miles.”

When Southwell began to falter, the woman encouraged her to keep going.

“And I got through it because of her and because of the support and camaraderie of the running community,” she said.

As they neared the end of the run, the woman returned the baton to Southwell.

“She gave it to me and she said ‘it’s your race, pass it on.’ And that was really meaningful,” Southwell said.

The relay helped her put things into perspective.

“It was so hot and I knew I had to finish and I knew I had to run. I think about the people who can’t run and I think about the people who don’t have legs – and it’s still hard to run,” she said. “And it makes me so grateful that I keep running for a cause. And we were raising money – we raised $80,000 [for the One Fund Boston].”

‘Everything changed’

Southwell works in Boston and took a break to watch the Marathon. She had watched the elite runners cross the finish line earlier in the day, and returned to cheer on the charity runners “because they need cheering,” she said.

She found a space near the finish line, behind a mother and her three young children, at the corner of Exeter and Boylston streets.

“It was very festive and there was so much joy in the air. This one woman started walking right in front of us, and the crowd exploded and she started running,” she said. “And I was just so moved; it was really special. And right after that everything changed.”

Southwell said she heard a noise, turned her head to the left and “saw the billowing smoke from the bomb pillaring up higher than the building. I knew instantly it was a bomb and I knew I had to get out of there.”

Without thinking, she “scooped” up the little boy sitting in front of her, and following close behind the child’s mother and two siblings, ran down Boylston Street. When the second bomb went off in front of them, Southwell said she “literally froze on the sidewalk.”

“I had this little boy in my arms and I didn’t know what to do,” she said.

The children’s mother shepherded them inside The Tannery on Boylston Street and they headed for the basement.

“I grabbed her coat and I said ‘I have your kid. I have your kid.’ And we ran inside,” Southwell said.

Scared, but unhurt, they huddled inside the basement along with several store employees and shoppers, for “what felt like eternity,” but was actually only 10 minutes.

Uncertain what would happen next, they attempted to leave the building, but a store employee frantically shoved them back inside. The man later told them he had seen the SWAT team running down the street and had “panicked.” They eventually exited through a side door in the basement.

Southwell lives in Maynard with her boyfriend Scott, of seven years, and said while she was hiding in the basement she realized she was “so grateful that we had a great morning and I didn’t need to go home and say I’m sorry.”

She is more aware than ever of the importance of treating people with respect – and not just those who are closest to her, but the person “who gets my sandwich order wrong.”

She hopes to hold on to that feeling, she said, “every single day. You just don’t know,” she said. “And I don’t want to have regrets. So that’s really changed me.”